


Dregs

by TheonSugden



Category: Emmerdale
Genre: Alcoholism, Animal Death, Gen, Verbal Abuse, mention of assisted suicide, self hatred
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-08-24
Updated: 2015-08-24
Packaged: 2018-04-17 00:00:29
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,458
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/4644900
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/TheonSugden/pseuds/TheonSugden
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Aaron tells Laurel some home truths, but she has harsh words of her own.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Dregs

**Author's Note:**

> This is set while Laurel was still on a bender and had accidentally run over the pet dog of Aaron's cousin Marlon.

“Nice arse, mate.”

Adam, who’d been bending over and getting back up all morning while Aaron sat back and thanked his still-healing ankle for the excuse to slack off, laughed amidst the scrap pile, wiggling his denim cheeks for emphasis as he stood up again. 

Aaron rolled his eyes good-naturedly. He really wasn’t in a happy mood, but Adam usually made him feel better.

“So…” Adam paused, treasure trail visible as he lifted his arms to wipe the sweat off his forehead, “ya think we should take Scrappy to see your Marlon?”

The smile faded from Aaron’s face faster than the dying sun over their heads.

“Surprised you give a toss,” he snapped, unable to stop himself.

Adam looked a little thrown but couldn’t say Aaron was wrong. 

“It’s not me…it’s Vic. Won’t even look her in the eye, she says.”

“Only got one eye to spare as it is,” Aaron muttered, looking over at Scrappy, currently staring at the horizon like he was getting signals from space. 

“Ain’t that simple, Adam…” Aaron started, “I know you’ve had dogs. Nobody’s gonna want to have some teary hug with a mutt they barely know. Don’t work that way for you, why would it for him?”

“Yeah mate, but I’m not a Dingle,” Adam replied, scratching his scalp. 

Aaron grimaced at the idea that the Dingles were somehow their own species. 

Hell, maybe they were.

He walked over to Scrappy, something he rarely did as it always brought Clyde back and he was thinking about Clyde enough already with Daisy gone. He didn’t want to risk bending over on the gravel, so he just tried to pet the dog’s head, hands so awkward it was like he’d never been near one before.

Scrappy just stared at him, like he was in another world entirely, one Aaron could never begin to understand. 

“Know how ya feel, pal.”

The dog’s sudden sharp barks nearly made Aaron fall back on his bad ankle. Adam caught him, but Aaron was distracted by whatever had caused the outburst.

Whatever indeed.

It was Laurel, half-cut, staggering toward them like something off Walking Dead.

“Aa-aron…please. I know you can talk to Marlon for me. Help him understand. Please…ple -”

The rest of her begging, much to Aaron’s relief, was cut off by her slipping on the gravel. 

Adam raced over to her. Aaron would have left her there to rot if not for her kids. 

“I’m not going in there,” Laurel half-slurred when Adam and Aaron led her to the portacabin. “Dunno what you might do to me…touch me…”

Aaron did laugh that time, laughing again when he saw her glare in response.

“I’m gonna get dead wild and sexy and clean up all the cuts you got from bein’ a worthless sot,” Aaron spat, gesturing for Adam to go get help from the pub. Adam looked unsure until one final sharp jerk of the head from Aaron.

“Where is he going? To get my loving family? Love me so much they left me in the gutters. Course that’s where you Dingles all come from anyway. Like…like cats in the toilet.”

Aaron had no idea what she was saying and didn’t care very much.

“Got a few drops of a beer left if you sit down and shut up.”

That did the trick. Laurel lunged into the small office, pouring the tiny amount of her booze down in a throat in a way that reminded Aaron of his grandfather Shadrach. 

As Laurel stumbled into a chair, she looked at him without managing to ever see him. It was like he wasn’t actually there, like she just saw some other fuzzy stranger in the way.

“You look like him…”

Aaron gave her a confused glance. 

“Shadrach. Your…whatever he was. Your lot breed like rabbits.”

 “He was my granddad,” Aaron replied, somberly. He didn’t like to think about him.

“He had such sad sad eyes. Just like you. Y’know, Ash-Ashley and I were the only two who cared about him. Some nights he showed up on our doorstep. Slept on the rug like…”

“Like a dog?” Aaron asked, bitterly. 

“And he’s dead like one too,” Laurel finished, aimlessly, before she tripped over another point to jab into Aaron’s hand. “Saint Marlon couldn’t keep him alive either, could he? Daisy was his dog. Not mine. Why don’t you blame him? Why is everything always my fault?”

Aaron looked down at the floor.

“Too good to talk to me??” she challenged him, standing up now.

With her long hair frazzled in ten directions and her baggy top and sweater stained and torn, she reminded Aaron of one of the stories he read as a kid about the demented nannies who came around to punish bad little boys and girls. 

“You want me to tell you how sick you make me. Give you a reason to feel even sorrier for yourself. I can’t be bothered. Sorry.”

Laurel sneered at him, a sneer that so often matched his own.

 “I don’t feel sorry for myself. I hate myself. The only time I don’t is…”

She looked at the empty can of booze before making a run for the door, adding another scratch to her cheek when she crashed over a chair. 

Aaron wanted to let her bleed, but he knew how many people had felt the same way about him. He couldn’t be like them. He’d never forgotten how it had made him feel.

As he sat her down and began cleaning her cuts, smiling to himself every time she hissed from the pain, she started to ramble, looking him dead in the eye through the jibbering. 

He always thought someone as low down as she’d become wouldn’t be that brazen, but the more she went on, the more he started to realize this wasn’t really Laurel at all. It was some stranger in some dark place he knew all too well himself.

“Aaron…” she started as he nearly finished. “I had a niece…pretty girl.”

“Jasmine,” he said, dreading where this was probably going. 

“Yes. Yes. Jasmine. So pretty. Not that you’d really notice. She was just like you. She was gay…sometimes. And she killed somebody.”

Aaron’s stomach clenched at some paranoid fear that she knew about Katie.

“I was there for her. I was. I was. I can be there for you too…she killed somebody. She killed her boyfriend too. Just like you. I can help you. You killed people. I can help.”

Aaron’s eyes welled up as he remembered Jackson’s lifeless body in that damn bed, in that fucking cottage that felt like it was the smallest place in the world by the time Aaron ran out, ran and ran until he thought his feet would fall off. 

He never should have stopped. 

Laurel’s eyes shone as she thought she’d made a connection.

“Are you that desperate to get shitfaced?” he said, eager to see that unholy gleam die away. “Listen to yourself.”

He looked at her deflated, defiant rage, and he saw himself, a teenage boy who’d done nothing but hurt the people who loved him, a grown man who thought he’d learned better, but had really just figured out to cut them in ways where the marks went even deeper.

He saw himself, and he hated himself, and he hated her.

“Don’t you  _dare_  judge me,” she spat. “You killed your dog and everybody gave you a medal! You should be giving me tips!”

Aaron slammed his fist down on the desk beside her to see her jump. Instead she barely noticed, her only reaction being a small smirk.

“You really are like me,” he said, grinning with razor blades as teeth. “You deserve to die in a gutter. Guess we’ll have a race to see who gets there first. I’m just glad your kids’ll be well shot of ya.” 

At that point Adam came in with Cain and Harriet Finch, and Aaron turned his back to her, closed his eyes, ignored her shouts and screams that sounded like death rattles. 

Scrappy barked throughout, and for ten minutes after she’d left.

He hadn’t even realized how much he’d zoned out until he felt his head on Adam’s shoulders, Adam’s strong arms around his waist. 

“She really got you bad, mate,” he whispered, finger under Aaron’s chin. “What’d she say?”

Aaron reluctantly broke away, walking outside to check on the dog. Scrappy had the same defeated, delirious look he knew was on his own.

Maybe they could get through this together. Nobody else would ever understand anyway.

“Nothin’,” Aaron replied quietly, allowing himself a small, sad smile when it licked his hand and nuzzled at his jacket. “Nothing I ain’t already heard.”


End file.
